How to tell if your wine has gone bad

Dec. 10, 2013

Prime Rib

1 (5-bone) prime rib (about 6 pounds) of grass-fed and finished, local organic beef, fat cap trimmed to about 1-inch thick (ask your butcher for help if needed)2 tablespoons Fleur de sel or other high-quality sea salt1 tablespoon garlic powder2 teaspoons paprika2 teaspoons rosemary2 teaspoons black pepper, freshly ground Three hours before roasting time, pull the beef from the refrigerator and let stand on the counter, covered loosely with a clean cotton towel (and out of reach of Fido). Thirty minutes before roasting time, preheat oven to 500 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the salt and spices and mix thoroughly. Bring the beef to the bowl, and rub the spice mix all over the roast, pressing most of it into the fat cap. Place a rack in the bottom of a large casserole and place the roast, bone-side down, on the rack. Place in the middle of the 500-degree oven for 20 minutes. Turn the heat down to 325 degrees; rotate the casserole 180 degrees, then set the timer for 12 minutes per pound (for a 6-pound roast, 1:12:00). Using an instant-read internal thermometer, check the temperature in the center of the meat (not at the bone). If it has reached 125 degrees, remove it from the oven. If not, continue to cook and check the temperature roughly every 5 to 7 minutes until it is between 125 to 130 degrees. Try to use the same hole each time you insert the thermometer. Remove from oven, cover with foil and allow to rest for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, finish up your other dishes and call everyone to the table. • NOTE: After roasting, the rest period is very important. While in the oven, the blood in the roast tries to move away from the heat, concentrating in the center. If it is in the oven too long, pressure builds there and these flavorful juices follow the path of least resistance, along the grains of the meat, to escape. This leaves a dry and overdone roast. However, if you catch the roast at the right temperature (125-130 degrees), all the luscious flavor will still be there, and resting allows it to redistribute throughout the whole roast. Carve from the center for rarer cuts, and from the ends for more well done.

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There is a wide variety of baffling nomenclature in the wine world. Newcomers may wonder why flavors described as “tar,” “tobacco” or “forest floor” could possibly be construed as good things, and how there can be a difference between aroma (the smell of the grapes in the wine) and bouquet (the smell of the wine).

Perhaps most confusing is the term “corked.” This does not mean that the wine is sealed with a cork, nor that the cork has been removed. Rather, it is a shorthand term for cork taint, or wine that has been affected by trichloroanisole (TCA), a byproduct of the processing of tree bark into the familiar cylindrical wine corks.

According to The San Francisco Chronicle, a study conducted in Australia at the 2004 Macquarie Bank Sydney Royal Wine Show, sampling more than 2,000 wines from around the world, showed that 8.45 percent, or an average of one bottle of every case, was contaminated with the foul-smelling chemical. Other estimates have ranged from 2 percent to 12 percent. Curiously, the Australian study found taint 2 percent more often in white wines than red but offered no explanation as to why this might be.

Detectable at levels as low as 5 parts per trillion, TCA’s effect can be as subtle as muting the aroma of the wine, or as overwhelming as a distinct smell and flavor of moldy newspaper. The good news is that most reputable wine sellers will accept returns of corked wines; although it is best to get the wine back to them as quickly as possible after opening, and with very little consumed from the bottle, just to be courteous. But, how can you tell that the wine is corked and not simply a bad wine?

There are four kinds of bad wine. First, there is corked wine and the wet cardboard character we were just discussing. Then there is oxidized wine, which can result from a bad seal or simply having been open too long. This can cause the wine to take on a brownish color and the taste of old apples or worse. There also is a multitude of fairly rare but possible bacterial taints that result from unsanitary conditions in the winery. Lastly, we have the very simple poorly made wine. In it, you’ll find aromas, bouquets and flavors such as wet grass, cat’s pee, band-aids or asparagus.

Avoiding the poorly made wines is just a matter of personal taste and experience; so too with the bacterial infections. To avoid oxidized wine, inspect the cork upon removal. Make sure that the top is dry while the bottom is uniformly moist, with no sign of the wine having leaked along the edge to the top (this can allow bacteria to multiply its way past the seal).

How to avoid cork taint? Simple: Screwcaps. I know. I, too, lament the loss of the ritual and romance of the corkscrew, but imagine if we were just today inventing the idea of wine and of putting it in a bottle. Do you think we would stop up the end with chunks of Portuguese tree bark? Not likely.

Now there are those who say that the cork adds a certain something to a wine that will lay on its side for 10 or 20 years, though my palate is not sophisticated enough to be able to detect that. Nonetheless, how would you feel if you cared for a valuable wine for 15 years only to open it and discovered it had been tainted since day one?

There are synthetic corks, and by all accounts, these do make a good seal and return the ritual of the corkscrew, but they are expensive compared with screwcaps and in our society, the consumer pays for absolutely everything. The screwcap offers economy, a perfect seal, and the egalitarian idea of making wine more approachable for everyone. Tough to argue with that. So don’t feel bad about giving a gift of a screwcapped wine this season. At least you can rest assured it won’t be corked.

For the holidays, I wrote some recipes for the great Iowa company Simply Organic, including this one for prime rib.

Table Wine is a weekly feature of the Press-Citizen. Prices listed are estimated retail. Chef Kurt Michael Friese is co-owner with his wife, Kim, of the Iowa City restaurant Devotay. Questions and comments may be posted at www.press-citizen.com.